Three or so years back Sabotage announced their second game after The Messenger via Kickstarter. From reviewing dates, it appears it was announced before I had actually finished The Messenger, but I went ahead and slammed that Back button immediately based on the quality of what I had already been exposed to. The pitch was pretty straight forward: We’re making a new game, it’s a love letter to mid 90’s SNES RPGs, and oh btw we secured Yasunori Mitsuda as a guest composer. Yes, absolutely, take my money I trust you.

(They missed their projected release date by a year and change, but you know the world ended in between there, so they get a pass.)

So the game’s finally out and it owns extensively. I’ve been putting in an hour or two nightly with Li’l Buddy and he’s been enjoying it, even though I have to read so much text to him to keep him up to speed with what’s going on. We got the first ending earlier in the week, then I plowed through post-game stuff, and we wrapped up the true ending day or so back. It’s good. It’s really really good. It’s the best game I’ve ever played that wanted to be Chrono Trigger.

I don’t know how they pulled it off, probably by just legitimately making a new good game from scratch. Over the past 28 years (Oh no. Chrono Trigger is 28 years old.) countless teams have attempted this, but the ones I’ve seen / tried felt like they were trying too hard to be derivative or referential first instead of just being a good game. So you end up with a game that screams “hello fellow Chrono Trigger Enjoyers, here is my RPG Maker Magnum Opus”, but it’s just not good.

Sea of Stars has amazing fundamentals. Everything is solid and oozing charm. The world is a seamless mix of pixel art and shader effects that I can’t say I’ve seen done this way anywhere, or if I have it wasn’t pulled off nearly this well: The base art assets are pixel art, but then lightning and some effects are shaders, and there are some other effects mixed in like translucent refraction of images through crystals. It’s just implemented so tastefully that it doesn’t beat you over the head with it, it just fits. Movement also isn’t grid-based, it’s super fluid just running around and feels great.

Combat Gimmicks are a staple of this experimental era of JRPGs, where we started getting timed attacks, unique character designs, combo attacks, situational attacks, positional attacks, etc. Sea of Stars has all of that, and it’s all implemented solidly, but those are all sort of just the base mechanics of combat. The real focuses of combat in Sea of Stars are the turn system itself and locks.

There’s no ATB system, turns are totally sequential. You have your three characters and they go on a knockout system before a “full” turn starts over. Enemies preparing to Do Something have a countdown showing exactly when they will act, and taking an action with one of your characters will tick all enemies down by one. Locks extend that system by throwing up a way to short-circuit an enemy’s cast process by showing you 2-10 emblems of what types of attacks you need to do to prevent their next “big” action. So you might see a big boy charging up some huge fireball, but if you hit him with Sword / Blunt / Moon Magic, he’ll eat it and lose his action.

Early game this means you’re dealing with pretty basic attacks, focus down enemies before they can act, break a couple locks, etc. By mid-to-late game combat turns into a full on puzzle game. You’re not just face-rolling powerful attacks, you’re balancing matching attacks to weaknesses, chipping away at locks, and using special attacks to delay turns. By late game you’re weaving in combos to efficiently take down locks, constantly swapping characters around to balance out who’s taken hits, who has the most effective spells, etc.

Regarding swapping, yeah, you can swap any time mid-combat with zero penalty. I can’t recall another RPG along these lines with a decently sized cast of characters where you get to make so extensive use of your whole squad at all times, not constrained by swapping only at town / in camps / whatever. It makes the party feel like an actual cohesive unit, instead of just the three or four dudes you’ve chosen to main.

The ability to freely swap characters mid-combat is just one of several Quality of Life features that they’ve implemented here that seem trivial but end up being essential to how the game works and plays, and it’s all interconnected. Mana is regained by doing normal attacks. KO’ed characters auto-rez after a couple turns, but can’t be swapped out until they rez. There are consumables to speed up both of these, but you’re not expected to depend on juicing your party with Ethers and Phoenix Downs because you’re hard-capped to 10 consumables at any time. . . But it’s ok, because you’re encouraged to actually use the consumables you have, because all food items can be cooked using materials you gather in-game. It completely side-steps the problem of hoarding consumables by simultaneously capping them and making them abundant.

On top of those quality of life things that are baked into the game, there’s a huge host of explicit accessibility items you can buy in-game, that turn into toggleable elements in the menu. For instance, you can turn on feedback for a timed attack, or turn on “just do all my timed attacks for me”, or you can straight buff your party’s HP, or auto-heal after every encounter. It’s very extensive and there’s no penalty for using or not using any of it.

The general setting and world-building are spectacular. The world of The Messenger was great, but felt doomed, dead and/or dying. The world of Sea of Stars is troubled, but still vibrant and full of hope. . and it’s literally the same world. Yes, this is a stealth prequel. It’s interesting because it’s completely left off of the marketing, and isn’t really explicit til the later part of the game, and even then it doesn’t beat you over the head with it. You’re just in the same world, seeing the origin of some of the bosses from The Messenger, just playing through it from a different perspective at a different time. The music is also amazing (as expected), certified bangers all the way through.

Somewhat similar to The Messenger, there’s a pretty large tonal shift partway through the game, but it’s nowhere near as comprehensive or impactful as the one in The Messenger. The shift is about 75% through the game, and that last quarter feels like it moves at a much faster pace than the rest of the game. It’s not bad but it’s… something. The pacing of the last quarter or so of the game is one of the only things I can complain about. It’s not even bad, it’s just that everything else is so good that it’s comparatively less good.

If you even remotely enjoy this kind of game it’s an immensely easy recommendation. Even if you’re not 100% down with it, there’s so much charm and tasteful quality of life stuff to make it accessible to anyone. Highly Recommended.